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Movies & TV

Film Friday: Killer Joe, The Bourne Legacy, Red Lights and more

Compliance (Craig Zobel) is a tightly wound thriller that explores the banality of evil – complete with a drive-thru. Inspired by true events, the film is set in a fast food restaurant that becomes a panopticon-like prison when a mystery caller claiming to be a cop gets the manager (Ann Dowd) to detain Becky (Dreama Walker), a young female employee. The film soon takes us into the dark corners of the psyche, raising questions of obedience and free will. It’s genius is its focus on the crime rather than the investigation, forcing us to sit through (and become implicated in) Becky’s detention and eventual sexual assault. While the conclusion feels rushed, failing to delve into a deeper critique of contemporary American society, Walker and Dowd’s performances ground the film in a complex moral ambiguity that’s wisely left unresolved. 90 min.

Rating: NNNN (Kiva Reardon)

Opens Aug 10 at TIFF Bell Lightbox. See here for times.


Killer Joe (William Friedkin) is even crazier, bloodier and weirder than director Friedkin’s last run at a Tracy Letts play, Bug. This one’s a big old slice of Texas mayhem in which a Dallas idiot (Emile Hirsch) hires a hit man (Matthew McConaughey) to murder his mother for the insurance, only to see the plan almost immediately spiral out of control, expanding to the point where the idiot’s beatific sister (Juno Temple) becomes the assassin’s “retainer.” Letts sets up a revolving door of betrayals and reversals worthy of the Coen brothers, and Friedkin’s embrace of digital cinema lets him create a vivid and unnaturally lurid landscape in which the amped-up performances of the entire cast seem entirely at home. McConaughey – who’s enjoying a renaissance of his own – oozes genteel menace as the eponymous assassin, but Thomas Haden Church steals the picture as Hirsch’s defeated father, slouching through the action like the hapless, helpless fool he knows himself to be. 103 min.

Rating: NNNN (NW)

Opens Aug 10 at Scotiabank Theatre. See here for times.


Oslo, August 31st (Joachim Trier) follows Anders, a man who roams the streets checking in on old friends, meeting a few new ones, visiting various apartments, parks and cafés while breathing it all in. These events might seem trivial, but since Anders is a recovering junkie with a sketchy history, every mundane detail becomes anchored in both hope and dread. While visiting Oslo for a job interview, he scours the city he grew up in while revisiting his past. What he’s searching for is an enigma: he may find a sign that he can start over or an excuse to relapse or a reason to end it all. Anders Danielsen Lie delivers a remarkably contained performance that keeps us hanging on his minute gestures, and writer/director Trier (a distant relative of Lars) treats Anders’s ordeal with an assured hand. Subtitled. 90 min.

Rating: NNNN (RS)

Opens Aug 10 at TIFF Bell Lightbox. See here for times.


The Bourne Legacy (Tony Gilroy) finds director Gilroy nicely expanding the world he co-created as the screenwriter of Matt Damon’s action trilogy, with Edward Norton as a spook spearheading the clean-up of various covert programs in the wake of Jason Bourne’s rebellion, and Jeremy Renner and Rachel Weisz as a super-soldier and a researcher trying to stay ahead of the bagmen. Eschewing the kinetic sensibility of Paul Greengrass’s sequels for sleeker, more carefully composed visuals, Gilroy finds new angles on the Bourne mythology, making nearly every player complicit in awful things at some level even if they think themselves above reproach. And Renner makes a great action hero, slipping into the role of Aaron Cross just as smoothly as Damon made Bourne his signature character. There’s life in this franchise yet. 126 min.

Rating: NNN (NW)

Opens Aug 10 at 401 & Morningside, Beach Cinemas, Coliseum Mississauga, Coliseum Scarborough, Courtney Park 16, Docks Lakeview Drive-In, Eglinton Town Centre, Empire Theatres at Empress Walk, Grande – Steeles, Interchange 30, Queensway, Rainbow Market Square, Rainbow Promenade, Rainbow Woodbine, Scotiabank Theatre, SilverCity Fairview, SilverCity Yonge, SilverCity Yorkdale, Varsity. See here for times.


Searching for Sugar Man (Malik Bendjelloul) introduces little-known musician Rodriguez, unravelling a mystery that nobody knew they wanted the answer to. The Detroit-based 70s folksinger never found an audience in the States and ended up fading into the shadows. Unbeknownst to him, bootleg copies of his albums reached South Africa, where the music inspired the nation. South Africans thought him dead until two self-appointed Cape Town sleuths decided to resurrect the legend. Don’t google Rodriguez before seeing this doc. Its pleasures come from the enigma and the revelations to an audience as ignorant of the facts as the South Africans whose investigation is the main focus. By celebrating this unsung hero and turning people on to his music, the film aims to redeem history’s slight. 85 min.

Rating: NNN (RS)

Opens Aug 10 at Bloor Hot Docs Cinema. See here for times.


Red Lights (Rodrigo Cortés) finds the director of Buried expanding well beyond the man-in-a-box gimmick of that airtight thriller. But he’s overreached drastically in this creeper about a pair of academic researchers (Cillian Murphy, Sigourney Weaver) who debunk paranormal activity until a reclusive mentalist (Robert De Niro) challenges the foundations of their knowledge. The first hour establishes a quietly creepy atmosphere and a nice camaraderie between Weaver and Murphy, along with a charming supporting turn from Elizabeth Olsen as a student with whom Murphy becomes involved. But when the focus shifts to De Niro’s clichéd antagonist, The Blind Psychic Who Sees More Than Everyone Else Around Him, Cortés’s script reveals itself to be little more than a bag of cheap reversals. Sure, the final flourish is worthy of M. Night Shyamalan – but it’s the Shyamalan of The Village and The Happening, not The Sixth Sense. 113 min.

Rating: NN (NW)

Opens Aug 10 at Yonge & Dundas 24. See here for times.


2 Days in New York (Julie Delpy) is ostensibly a sequel to writer/director/star Delpy’s 2007 dramedy 2 Days In Paris. Catching up with her character Marion a few years down the road with a child and a new partner (Chris Rock), it’s much more broadly farcical and far less thoughtful than its predecessor. Marion’s insouciance has curdled into whiny self-indulgence, and gags about her crass, lusty family land like bricks. Rock’s Mingus is little more than a doormat, and key supporting characters come off as obnoxious rather than endearing. Given that Delpy shares writing credits with Alexia Landeau and Alex Nahon, who play Marion’s sister and her hipster boyfriend, maybe that’s intentional. But they’re just unbearable. Some subtitles. 96 min.

Rating: N (NW)

Opens Aug 10 at Grande – Yonge, Varsity. See here for times.


The Campaign (Jay Roach) stars Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis as bumbling Southern politicians running for Congress. Screened after press time – see review August 10 at nowtoronto.com/movies. 85 min.

Opens Aug 10 at 401 & Morningside, Carlton Cinema, Colossus, Courtney Park 16, Eglinton Town Centre, Grande – Steeles, Grande – Yonge, Kennedy Commons 20, Queensway, Rainbow Market Square, Rainbow Promenade, Rainbow Woodbine, SilverCity Fairview, SilverCity Yonge, SilverCity Yorkdale, Yonge & Dundas 24. See here for times.


Iron Sky (Timo Vuorensola) is a B movie about Nazis who’ve been hiding out on the moon and planning to take over Earth in 2018. No press screening. 93 min.

Opens Aug 10 at Royal. See here for times.


The Odd Life of Timothy Green (Peter Hedges) is a family fantasy about a childless couple whose wish for an infant is granted. See review in next week’s issue. 104 min.

Opens Aug 15 at Coliseum Mississauga, Courtney Park 16, Eglinton Town Centre, Empire Theatres at Empress Walk, Grande – Steeles, Interchange 30, Queensway, Rainbow Woodbine, Yonge & Dundas 24. See here for times.


Singin’ in the Rain (Stanley Donen, Gene Kelly) is a special screening in the Classic Film Series of Donen’s movie musical starring Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds and Donald O’Connor. 102 min.

Opens Aug 15 at Coliseum Mississauga, Eglinton Town Centre, Queensway, Scotiabank Theatre, SilverCity Fairview. See here for times.

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